Covering All Things Florida
Every March and November, America reenacts one of its strangest magic tricks: we lose an hour, then months later we find it again behind the couch cushions of November, dusty but intact, like the coins that fell out of our pockets back in the 1980s when people still used cash.
Astrobotic has announced that its Griffin-1 lunar mission is now targeting July 2026, a shift that gives engineers time to complete propulsion integration and qualify the lander’s engines. Their update, published today, also outlines steady progress on systems from tanks to software as the company prepares to deliver multiple payloads to the Moon’s south-polar Nobile region.
With this news, any chance of a Falcon Heavy launch from Kennedy Space Center in 2025 is now kaput.
The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach is now home to a major exhibition titled Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection, marking the most extensive presentation of The Leiden Collection ever shown in the United States. The Leiden Collection is among the largest and most important collections of seventeenth-century Dutch art in private hands, and many of its paintings are rarely seen. This new exhibition gives art lovers a chance to see many of the Leiden Collection works up close and in person. For many, this is a chance not to be missed.
Located at 1450 S. Dixie Highway, the exhibition runs during regular museum hours: Thursdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $18 for adults, with discounts available for students, seniors, and children.
At 12:01 AM ET this morning, the federal government officially entered a shutdown after Congress failed to pass a continuing resolution funding key agencies. The shutdown’s effects reach far, and here on the Space Coast, the heart of America’s space program at Kennedy Space Center, the pain was felt instantly.
As the space industry shifts from government-led missions to a new era of commercial space stations, microgravity research is becoming increasingly significant. Houston-based Axiom Space is launching a global academic initiative aimed at keeping science at the forefront of space development.
NASA’s Perseverance rover may have stumbled on its most compelling clue yet in the hunt for ancient life on Mars. A rock sample taken from a dried-up riverbed in Jezero Crater, known as “Sapphire Canyon,” shows signs that could point to past microbial activity. The sample was collected in 2024 from a rock dubbed “Cheyava Falls,” and new findings published Wednesday in Nature highlight the presence of potential biosignatures.
These biosignatures—chemical or structural hints that might come from living organisms—aren’t proof of life, but they raise the stakes. More testing is needed to determine whether these clues came from biology or purely chemical processes.
Florida’s east coast has changed a lot over the centuries, but one thing that’s held its ground—name and all—is Mosquito Lagoon. While other places in the region have shed their buggy branding in favor of more marketable names, Mosquito Lagoon remains the last major waterway in Florida to retain its original moniker.
So where did the name “Mosquito Lagoon” come from, and why did it stick?
A Florida man learned the hard way that sharks don’t have much patience posing for photos.
Shawn Meuse was posing with a lemon shark on a beach in Boca Grande when the animal turned on him, sinking its teeth into his leg. The moment of the shark bite was caught on video and quickly spread across social media.
As Space Coast skies faded into night, United Launch Alliance launched their Vulcan-Centaur rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at 7:59 PM Eastern Time, carrying the classified USSF-106 mission for the U.S. Space Force. The evening launch, near the end of the one-hour window, was a successful return for the vehicle after its near-catastrophic solid rocket failure in its last launch in October, 2024.
